


The Rain

by fuckingsherlock



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD Sherlock, Panic Attacks, Podfic Available, Post-Reichenbach, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Waterboarding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 12:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19062298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckingsherlock/pseuds/fuckingsherlock
Summary: After his return, Sherlock goes quiet in the rain.John doesn’t think he fully understands what that means.[Podfic available here.]





	The Rain

It’s after a case in early spring. They’ve been running on few -- and for too many hours -- and John hasn’t felt more hopeful in years. Sherlock’s reintroduction into John’s life had been as shockingly seamless as his return. 

It’s well into the night and the brisk winter air is morphing into something lighter each day.

And just like the flowers thirst to bloom, the rain is gentle and kind. It is giving and cool. It makes John’s smile and his shoulder ache.

And although it's breathtaking: Sherlock with his head tilted toward the sky in an approximate 145 degree of elevation, the adrenaline of having caught the perpetrator with just the use of their teamwork; the rain is still forming rivers and tributaries that cascade from Sherlock’s jaw, eyebrows, curls. And although it’s no longer their English winter, it’s certainly uncomfortable.

John’s attention is hazed by the momentary glory of their catch when he notices the silence.

He can’t make out Sherlock’s expression under the diffused moonlight and distant lamp posts, but he can hear the shift in the detective’s breathing underneath the soft drizzle of rain.

What was once heavy and giddy with adrenaline has grown into short silent catch-breaths; fearful of creating more sound than absolutely necessary. Sherlock is silent.

“Hey,” John’s eyes are straining to adjust to the darkness of the witching hours. “Everything alright?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer. Not until they hail a cab willing to drive their soaked selves, not until they’re both in their respective homes.

John lies next to Mary that night and sleeps peacefully on. Sherlock remains silent until John returns to 221B four days later for their next case.

 

* * *

 

After Magnussen, Spring is in full force. And like the season of change, John moves back into 221B and turns in his life with Mary for a new leaf with Sherlock. It’s as seamless as John pretends it is, and in spring Sherlock is still Sherlock.

There’s something poetic about their domestic Mondays. John’s work shifts are his to decide by now, and he’s found that there’s something about England, maybe even Sherlock, that is calmer and more docile on Mondays. So John gives himself the day off. He is getting older, after all.

Before the fall, John’s secret indulgences were his days off work that coincided with overcast weather. Sherlock would pull all the curtains of the flat open to observe the rain with a boyish interest. He would claim it was not a sentimental gesture that prompted him to do so, but that the medium-dim sunlight provided him with the best light for experiments that he could only conduct with the exact lighting of those rainy days.

John never doubted this until he caught the man sprawled out on the coffee table one day, hands loosely intertwined on his belly, gazing at the endless cloudy-grey outside with a look of sheer contentment upon his features. His legs dangled over the edge of the table carelessly, and his silk dressing gown splayed in comfortable disarray as it pleased. 

John had sent Mike a photo of Sherlock; who reminded John of Mike’s cat from when they were studying at Barts together.

John sets down his second cuppa on the said coffee table, returning from nostalgic depths, and tries to wriggle into their couch as comfortably as he can. Upon awakening to the overcast weather, John had peeled back the dusty curtains just as Sherlock used to before the-

Before  _ then _ .

The rain makes John’s shoulder ache. It’s just shy of noon and Sherlock is still nowhere to be found, so John cooks something up and braves awakening the Kraken in his lair.

“Sherlock?” John knocks.

“Mmhph.” is audible through Sherlock’s bedroom door.

“No case, then. Join me for breakfast?”

“Mrngh- Koffffy.”

Sherlock is out and sipping at his coffee within five minutes, John is spreading butter and apricot marmalade on their toasts. It’s a comfortableness that neither has felt with anyone else before, but that doesn’t intimidate either of them anymore.

Then, with the abrupt rumble of thunder that vibrates the windows in warning, Sherlock stills. His coffee forgotten mid-sip, it’s as if everything surrounding Sherlock grows woven in cotton. His existence is muffled, his breathing is soft and fragile.

At first, John pauses. Then, he finishes his breakfast and goes about his day. He isn’t one to let good food go to waste, even if Sherlock was in his far off mind palace. In retrospect, the abruptness of Sherlock’s  _ thinking _ should have been a warning sign enough. 

Sometimes, John wonders how much of Sherlock he still knows to be the truth.

Because even after Sherlock manages to get up out of his seat and into the centre of the living room with the speed of thick molasses -- something agonisingly  _ slow  _ that John didn’t know Sherlock was capable of -- it isn’t warning enough for when the rain begins.

Because if John thought that Sherlock was quiet in thunder, he is frightening silent in the rain.

John doesn’t know what’s happening until he feels Sherlock’s presence enter the room with,

“John, I’ve discovere-” And cuts off. Frozen in place with the sound of the first heavy droplets hitting the fogged glass windows.

John’s brows furrow. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence for Sherlock to lose track of a sentence midway. However, Sherlock’s face is pinched, his breathing is rapid but inaudible, and his eyes are fixated on the innocent pitter patter outside. Sherlock is clutching his shoulder with one hand, and clawing at the collar of his inverted t-shirt collar with the other.

“Sherlock?”

His breathing grows more ragged.

“..rlock?”

His eyes are glazing over, unfocused. His nails are pulling at his shirt collar hard enough to permanently alter the elastic.

Abruptly, John pulls the curtains shut. The entire flat is encapsulated in protected muffled darkness from the sound of the rain. All the curtains are drawn when Sherlock snaps back into existence.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s eyes burn into John’s with an expression neither can quite understand. John thinks it’s rude and uncalled for. Sherlock thinks that his eyes convey his gratitude.

Sherlock remains quiet until the storm blows over a fortnight later. He remains oddly close in proximity to John all the while. 

Later, John thinks that maybe now the rain makes Sherlock’s shoulder ache too.

 

* * *

 

 

The next time is one that John, try as he might, will never be able to forget.

Sherlock had gone undercover in a club to uncover the mechanics of a suspected drug ring, which had led him to get piss drunk as well as unknowingly drugged by one of the bartenders. Had it not been for John catching on to Sherlock’s recklessness, the detective wouldn’t have left the club as unscathed as he did.

“Shut up! Just shut up for once, Sherlock!” John is breathing hard from the physical labour of ‘Hauling Detective Up Flight of Stairs’ to their flat. 

Sherlock hasn’t stopped giggling in the last ten minutes and his intoxicated breath is making John sick. At his last strand of patience, John doesn’t know what to do with a high _ and _ drunk Sherlock, so he drags the grimy, obscenely dressed man into their bathtub to get him clean and sober.

“You absolute,” John pulls off Sherlock’s idiotic leather boots, ripped jeans, filthy bomber jacket, and disgustingly tight T-shirt. “Sodding idiot.”

Sherlock giggles at this, but his voice is dangerously low; he forms and splays into the curves of the empty bathtub with unabashed confidence.

“Shut up,” John commands through clenched teeth as he leans over Sherlock and sprays him with lukewarm water.

And fuck-  _ This _ is the part John wishes he could forget.

Because Sherlock gasps in absolute betrayal. His breath is visibly knocked out of him in shock. Or terror.

Sherlock, once languid and giddy, lies beneath John as a shaking mess. 

“Shit.”

His face is scrunched tight with tense desperation so unlike him. Sherlock’s mouth parts open to pant, or scream, but John doesn’t hear any sound emerge.  John can see Sherlock taking in quick breaths in silence, mouth simultaneously forming an ‘o’-shaped word.

Not even thirty seconds have passed by the time John manages to slam the shower off and fall to his creaky knees to kneel over the trembling figure.  His warm fingers dig into the detective’s shoulders, shaking frantically, “Sherlock?”

John can see what Sherlock is mouthing now; an unconscious, continuous stream of ‘No’s’.

It chills John to the bone.

“Sherlock, it’s John.” He shakes him again, then runs his warm hands up Sherlock’s neck and combs the man’s soaked curls back from out of his eyes. John’s thumbs find refuge in the tight knots of muscle in Sherlock’s contracted face, and he forces the man’s eyes open.

Sherlock gasps like a drowning man.  John wonders how close that is to the truth.

“No.” Sherlock’s eyes narrow at John. “You can’t fool me.”

“What?” John is all confused, but at least they’re getting somewhere. At least he’s back on Earth with John now. “Sherlock, I’m not trying to fool you.”

Sherlock just shakes his head. And shakes his head. And shakes his head.

Sherlock effectively shakes his head until his curls are dry and tangled in the smoky mess that John hadn’t managed to wash off, and despite his scepticism of John’s identity, Sherlock puts up no fight when John dries and dresses him for bed, which John considers a partial victory.

John watches over Sherlock that night and witnesses Sherlock’s nightmares for the first time.

“Sherlock, wake up.” John had been dozing lightly against the headboard to Sherlock’s right. He gently touches a hand to the tossing and turning figure, but Sherlock does not stir. Unlike John, Sherlock’s nightmares are eerily silent. Unnaturally so. 

John vaguely wonders what this means, but focuses on pulling him out of the distressing trap of slumber.

Moments later, Sherlock’s eyes drag open, heavy with exhaustion. But his irises jolt frantic and wild in the darkness, and John can feel the movement echo through his body.

“What is my name?” Is the first thing Sherlock’s raspy voice begs for.

“What?” John is immediately on high alert. “Do you have a concussion?”

“Answer the question.”

John freezes. “Your name is Sherlock Holmes.” 

Sherlock exhales shakily. 

“We’re in our home at 221 Baker Street, and you’ve been drugged while undercover at the  _ Landing Strip _ .”

“..John.” Sherlock chokes out.

“Yes?”

“John.” Sherlock is testing the waters.

“Yes, Sherlock?” John is all patience.

“Alright.” Sherlock nods once. Twice.

“Alright.” John allows himself to breathe. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

 

The next time, and the next time, and every subsequent time after in which Sherlock reacts to the rain or shower or running water, John is on high alert. He doesn’t need the detective’s explanation by any means, though it might help prevent some triggers in their day-to-day lives. John respects Sherlock’s silence and Sherlock remains _silently_ grateful.

Together, John finds new methods of reassurance when the rain hits. Or when the panic sets in. Or when the flashbacks play like a cinematic record.

Gradually, it pieces together. The trauma of Sherlock’s disappearance is something that has become an integral part of the Sherlock that John is able to hold in his arms today. And no matter how many times Sherlock asks John to prove his identity, or to bandage the unconsciously self-inflicted clawing wounds on his neck, or give his chest to Sherlock to listen to his steadfast heartbeat, John will.

Eventually, the rain comes and Sherlock is able to keep rattling on through his deductions as if the flashbacks hadn’t been one of the most difficult hurdles they’ve had to overcome together. 

Eventually, they return to their special Mondays, and their shoulders ache in tandem. 

And occasionally Sherlock will still go quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> I miss u sherlock fandom. Hope ur doing well :-)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Rain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23002228) by [fuckingsherlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckingsherlock/pseuds/fuckingsherlock)




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